Manuel, in Ch. I : How Manuel Left the Mire
Figures of Earth (1921)
Context: I shall not ever return to you, my pigs, because, at worst, to die valorously is better than to sleep out one's youth in the sun. A man has but one life. It is his all. Therefore I now depart from you, my pigs, to win me a fine wife and much wealth and leisure wherein to discharge my geas. And when my geas is lifted I shall not come back to you, my pigs, but I shall travel everywhither, and into the last limits of earth, so that I may see the ends of this world and may judge them while my life endures. For after that, they say, I judge not, but am judged: and a man whose life has gone out of him, my pigs, is not even good bacon.
“Life and literature is a question of what one thrills to, and further than that no man shall ever go without putting his foot in a turd.”
Letter to J.B.Sutton, 21 December 1942
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Philip Larkin 42
English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian 1922–1985Related quotes
“The question was put to him, what hope is; and his answer was, "The dream of a waking man."”
Aristotle, 9.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 5: The Peripatetics
“If we don't put our foot down, they will release every man and his dog.”
(Criticizing the government's policy of releasing persons sentenced for involvement in the 2000 coup).
2000
As quoted in Details (1993-11).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print
“If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.”
Section 196 of the Code of Hammurabi (translated by Leonard William King, 1910).
Alternately translated as: If a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye.
"The World of the Hero" (1976)
Source: What is Property? (1840), Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"
Context: If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: What is property! may I not likewise answer, It is robbery, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?
I undertake to discuss the vital principle of our government and our institutions, property: I am in my right. I may be mistaken in the conclusion which shall result from my investigations: I am in my right. I think best to place the last thought of my book first: still am I in my right.